Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
Mark TwainSo far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.
Mark TwainSuppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Mark TwainWe wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can "show off" and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.
Mark TwainWhen I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Mark TwainThe Christian Bible is a drug store. Itยดs contents have remained the same but the medical practice continues. For 1,800 years these changes were slight--scarcely noticeable... The dull and ignorant physician day and night, and all the days and all the nights, drenched his patient with vast and hideous doses of the most repulsive drugs to be found in the storeยดs stock. He kept him religion sick for eighteen centuries, and allowed him not a well day during all that time.
Mark TwainWhen your watch gets out of order you have choice of two things to do: throw it in the fire or take it to the watch-tinker. The former is the quickest.
Mark TwainWe have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only when we set out to discover "the secret of God" that our difficulties disappear.
Mark TwainBarring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
Mark TwainA man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.
Mark TwainWe catched fish, and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didnโt ever feel like talking loud, and it warnโt often that we laughed, only a kind of low chuckle. We had mighty good weather, as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next.
Mark TwainReputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.
Mark TwainThe Church worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch - the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything.
Mark TwainIt takes some little time to accept and realize the fact that while you have been growing old, your friends have not been standing still, in that matter.
Mark TwainAs soon as a man recognizes that he has drifted into age, he gets reminiscent. He wants to talk and talk; and not about the present or the future, but about his old times. For there is where the pathos of his life lies - and the charm of it. The pathos of it is there because it was opulent with treasures that are gone, and the charm of it is in casting them up from the musty ledgers and remembering how rich and gracious they were.
Mark TwainLove is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just comes-none knows whence-and cannot explain itself.
Mark TwainThe laws of Nature, that is to say the laws of God, plainly made every human being a law unto himself, we must steadfastly refuse to obey those laws, and we must as steadfastly stand by the conventions which ignore them, since the statutes furnish us peace, fairly good government, and stability, and therefore are better for us than the laws of God, which would soon plunge us into confusion and disorder and anarchy if we should adopt them.
Mark TwainI don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.
Mark TwainOne day man by the slow processes of evolution shall develop into something really fine and high - some billions of years hence, say.
Mark TwainWe have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.
Mark TwainGolden rule: Made of hard metal so it could stand severe wear, it not being known at that time that butter would answer.
Mark TwainThe only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
Mark TwainWhen you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.
Mark TwainWho knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first!" Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer
Mark TwainThere is more real pleasure to be gotten out of a malicious act, where your heart is in it, than out of thirty acts of a nobler sort.
Mark TwainGod was left out of the Constitution but was furnished a front seat on the coins of the country.
Mark Twain